The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1887-08-12
JEDGE WAxEM ABROAD.
He and Mandy Visit Venice, Which They
Pronounce a Very wet Town.
Especial Correspondeuce

VENICE, July 49,
Politically speaking, Italy is a right
pushin sort of a country, and the king and
queen do good deal personally to cover up
the tyrant heel of oppression, but it is thar
all the same and it sticks out in a good many
places. One of these consists in the fact that
every Italian town is fenced in by customhouse
officers, and everything that goes in to sell
has to pay duty. l have saw the officers
board street car and examine bundles the
passengers had in their arms, and every
farmer with a donkey load of garden truck
comm to market has to pay at the gate be-
fore he. can git away. Strangers coming into
town from railroad depots air subject to hav-
ing their baggage examined eff they don't go
up i'll the regular hotel omnibusses Even in
the busses we have been stopped, but never
knowed what they said to me, and l shook
my head and went on My flask has been
empty for month, and ! amt got any to-
hacker except q few Italian segars that air
strong enough to hurl defants in the tyrant's
teeth, so don't bother myself much about
custom duties. | think eff King Humbert
would Shut up his custom Offices and git at
the same results by levying hucksters' and
pedlars' licenses it would look better and be
more in harmony with the sperrit of the
times.
But l am forgetting myself We air i'll
Venice now, and from the winder near which
write you these few lines l can see
the Grand canal, and watch the gondoliers in
their black boats moving about on the waters
like sea serpent with its head and tail up
and hump on its back. When we landed
here, and got in a sondola instid of a car to
go the hotel, Mandy liked to have had fit,
and said if she had knowed the spring freshets
hat cIIn have fn;I
Florence. Mandy was awair that Venice
had some canals for streets, but she thought
they were mostly round the edges of the
town, and if hadn't read up on the train
coming i'll | would have thought the same
way. l told her it was all right, but she
knew better and vowed and declared that
even if the hotel people could be tempted by
money to take us i'll out OF the wet that she
wouldn't think of sleepin' in the house till it
was completely dried out, because her room
atiz wouldn't stand any fooin' with damp
ness, and she didn't come to Europe to nuss
roomatiZ, but to see the sights and have a
good time. I coaxed her into going to see
the hotel anyhow, and when we got there it
stood back about 100 feet from the canal, and
looked so dry that she got out Of the gondolar.
"Well, ;" she says "this looks better, and if
the water amt raisin' I'll stay here over
night, but I'll go in the morning if there's the
least bit of sign of rain"
After we got supper we took walk, going
over the bridges every five minutes, and
follerin narrow little streets and looking up
and down canals in every direction till we
didn't know whether we was afioat or on
shore.
Finally Mandy says to me:
Bash, there's somethn lackin' about this
town that's been in every other Italian town.
Now, what is it?"
"'Taint the bad smells, is it?" ast.
"No, faint them; they air all present"
"'rant beggars, and aeas and dirt, and
cathedrals, and old masters and the wrecks of
time. is it?'
"No; they're all here, as far as I've saw.
It's somethin' else, and know it as well as
know my own name, but can't call it,"
begun to look around and scratch my
head, for had been missing something N.Y.
self.
"Mandv," says after bit, Owe got it
it's hosses and cartridges! We've been trapes-
ing round here for two hours and haven't
seen hoof or n wheel, nor q street wide
enongl. to put it in il we had it,"
That's what it was, too, and it was strange
we hadn't noticed it sooner, for they air in
sight more than anything else in city But
in Venice you somehow, without exactly
knowin' how, take it for granted that there
oughtn't to be any, and you go right ahead
from the first time you get there in not no.
ticing whether there air or not.
There is some art in Venice and good
many churches Venice is mighty roman
tic old place, reckon, and the gondoliers
with their boats i'll the soft light of she moon,
and the sweet music floating in off the waters
during the summer nights is fine for poetry,
but it amt worth shucks for business and the
place looks like it was covered with NOR.
gidges clean to the waters edge. A good
many of the old palaces are boarding houses
or art shops now, and the young Teller that
used to run his gondolier under his best girls
winder and give her free open air concert
has backed out into the rushin waters of the
past and the milk wagon gondoller ties up to
the back gate and waits till the hired girl let's
bucket down from the second story porch.
Ef Venice had some real estate to git
boom into she might once more assume the
proud position of other days, but no town
can't be a permanent success when its real es-
tate can he pumped up and squirted over into
the next county. That's one reason the Poto-
mac fats, i'll the vicinity of our own capital
city, is today the abidin place OF bad smells,
NS|oJ e&hN ooASA ChhSo'
~
We went into the doge's palace, and where
the Infamous Council of Ten and the wuss
one of Three used to sit and deliberate and
cut mems beads off and torture them and
carry on in every sort of internal way, and
wondered, as looked around me, eff in them
times, when the council was meetin, the cti-
zens standing round st. Marks square didn't
look up at the walls and say, in whispers:
"The senate is in executive session." Politics
was politics in them days, and think, ef I'll
had my choice to nave been repperesenta-
tive man, like l am today, or plain, unos-
tentatious citizen. you would have found NE
workin peaceful OH my Wayback farm, not
thinking even about the postoffice, unless it
was to go after my mail once a week I'm u
patriot, wilin to risk his life f.' his country,
but Pm not one goin around with his life in
his hand tryin to git somebody to take it just
fer the sake of excitement. Theresa good
deal of difference between a fool and a pat
triot, sometimes. *#s
j am glad Washington city is not built on
the same plan as Venice is. IT it was, there
wouldn't be morning in the week during
the session of congress that the life saving
service men wouldn't have to be around
fshin' oht senators, congressman aid other
high officials of the government that had
been attempting to git home after business
hours 1t is not needcessary to dwell upon
the subject, as it is self evident proposition.
II it hadn't been for Mandy I'd afell in my
self the furst night we got here, and it wasn't
after business hours, either.
have not tole the readers of your valuable
journal all we saw in Venice, but if they can
spare the time to come to my lecture, which
will deliver in the Wayback courthouse this
fall, they will be amply repaid. Price, fifty
cents per head. Yours truly,
NJ. Q. WAxEM
P. S-Don't charge me for the above ad-
vertising and I'll give you and your family
complimenteries to the lecture. M. @. w,
-.
Use Short Pen Handles.
"A man cannot write rapidly or grace.
fully with q long handled pen," so said one of
the most rapid penmen in this city to are